0:00:02 > 0:00:07Britain is home to many of the most beautiful holy places in the world.
0:00:07 > 0:00:11Our religious heritage and architecture
0:00:11 > 0:00:15is more varied than virtually anywhere else on earth.
0:00:15 > 0:00:21My name is Ifor ap Glyn and I'm on a journey to explore the best of Britain's holy sites
0:00:21 > 0:00:25and to uncover the rich and diverse history of our spiritual landscape.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32I want to know how these places came to be,
0:00:32 > 0:00:36discover what they reveal about the people who worshipped at them
0:00:36 > 0:00:40and explore why they continue to fascinate us today.
0:00:40 > 0:00:42This place is incredible.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46My journey will take me to towering mountain hideaways.
0:00:46 > 0:00:50It was here that Saint Twrog took on the pagan forces of evil.
0:00:50 > 0:00:52Icy healing pools.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55I'm not sure what effect this is having on me,
0:00:55 > 0:00:57but it is certainly having an effect.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01And the graves of long-departed saints.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04There's something quite unsettling about this relic.
0:01:04 > 0:01:08I'll search out islands where the faithful seek refuge from the world.
0:01:08 > 0:01:12I'll wander ruins steeped in history.
0:01:12 > 0:01:18His congregation were roused to come here and rip down the rich trappings of this cathedral.
0:01:18 > 0:01:23And descend into caves which have been sacred for thousands of years.
0:01:23 > 0:01:27Wow. Wow!
0:01:27 > 0:01:30From the divine to the unexpected, join me on a journey
0:01:30 > 0:01:33to the unforgettable corners of our country,
0:01:33 > 0:01:36the landscapes that make the soul soar.
0:01:49 > 0:01:55When Danny Boyle chose an image to symbolise Britain in the Olympic opening ceremony,
0:01:55 > 0:01:58he chose a tree on a hill.
0:02:00 > 0:02:05And it was an image based on this place, Glastonbury Tor in Somerset.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10This hill and the town around it are at the heart of a battle
0:02:10 > 0:02:15that has rumbled on for 2,000 years between Christianity
0:02:15 > 0:02:18and the older beliefs that existed before its arrival.
0:02:24 > 0:02:28I'm setting out on a journey to understand why trees and mountains
0:02:28 > 0:02:31have been such important symbols at the heart of our country's
0:02:31 > 0:02:37spiritual history spanning different beliefs and thousands of years.
0:02:53 > 0:02:55I'm in Glastonbury.
0:02:55 > 0:02:59It's a shop window for all kinds of new age beliefs offering alternative
0:02:59 > 0:03:04spiritual paths that traditional Christianity has supposedly failed to provide.
0:03:04 > 0:03:08But it's also home to some of the most significant Christian sites in Britain.
0:03:08 > 0:03:14There's a collision of beliefs here but there's nothing new in that, paganism and Christianity have been
0:03:14 > 0:03:18rubbing up against each other for the best part of 2,000 years.
0:03:22 > 0:03:25This town is overflowing with symbols...
0:03:28 > 0:03:30..some centuries old...
0:03:32 > 0:03:37..some boasting a slightly less conventional spiritual pedigree.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43Glastonbury is the site of a modern-day battle in a very ancient war.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49As Christianity's appeal declines, these alternative belief systems
0:03:49 > 0:03:55are reoccupying this most enigmatic of English towns.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58At the heart of pagan belief is a deep-felt connection with the earth
0:03:58 > 0:04:02and nothing symbolises that better than trees and mountains.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07Glastonbury has its tor which ticks that box, but it's also home
0:04:07 > 0:04:11to the Glastonbury Thorn, amongst the most sacred trees in Britain.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15The story goes that soon after Christ's death
0:04:15 > 0:04:20one of his followers named Joseph of Arimathea visited Glastonbury.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24He's said to have brought with him the chalice used at the Last Supper,
0:04:24 > 0:04:27thus sparking the legend of the Holy Grail,
0:04:27 > 0:04:32but during his visit he's also reputed to have planted his walking stick in the ground
0:04:32 > 0:04:36causing the first Glastonbury Thorn to take root.
0:04:37 > 0:04:41What sets these thorn trees apart is that they flower twice a year,
0:04:41 > 0:04:46once at Christmas and once at Easter.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49The original Glastonbury Thorn reputedly survived
0:04:49 > 0:04:53until the 1650s when it was cut down by a Puritan soldier
0:04:53 > 0:04:56who saw it as a lingering symbol of pagan superstition.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02However, cuttings had been taken and here's one of them in the churchyard here at Glastonbury.
0:05:02 > 0:05:07From these trees a replacement was re-planted on the original spot
0:05:07 > 0:05:10where Joseph's staff is said to have taken root.
0:05:10 > 0:05:15But in December 2010, this legendary tree at the heart of the Glastonbury story
0:05:15 > 0:05:20was attacked again and all of its branches sawn off.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24This sorry-looking specimen is now all that remains of the tree
0:05:24 > 0:05:27on the site of the original Glastonbury Thorn.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30The identity of the attacker is a mystery.
0:05:32 > 0:05:37Although Christians and pagans both joined in mourning the loss of this tree,
0:05:37 > 0:05:43the fact that somebody wanted to cut it down, shows how divisive these symbols can be.
0:05:43 > 0:05:47Over there we see Glastonbury Tor, dominating the town.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51For the Christians it's important because of the ruins of the church on the top of it,
0:05:51 > 0:05:55for the pagans that is the Island of Avalon,
0:05:55 > 0:05:59a mythical place that lies at the centre of their vision of Britain.
0:05:59 > 0:06:04The relationship between pagans and Christians has always been an uneasy one.
0:06:08 > 0:06:15Leaving Glastonbury behind I want to dig deeper into these tensions between Christianity and paganism.
0:06:22 > 0:06:28The next stop on my journey is home to some trees which have long been sacred to both faiths,
0:06:28 > 0:06:32but also boasts a symbolism that is impossible to miss.
0:06:33 > 0:06:37This is Knowlton in Dorset,
0:06:37 > 0:06:43a church set within an ancient earthen henge, which forms a huge circle around us.
0:06:43 > 0:06:47This church building dates back to about the 12th century,
0:06:47 > 0:06:51the earthen henge however is at least 4,500 years old.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55It's a striking example of spiritual continuity in one place.
0:07:01 > 0:07:07Building a church slap bang in the middle of an ancient pagan site was a bold move.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12The Christians were making an empathic statement about their cultural dominance.
0:07:15 > 0:07:20The siting of this church within a pagan henge was no accident,
0:07:20 > 0:07:22but in fact part of a deliberate policy.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25This is what Pope Gregory had to say on the matter.
0:07:25 > 0:07:28"Concerning the matter of the English people.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33"The temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed,
0:07:33 > 0:07:36"but let the idols that are in them be destroyed.
0:07:36 > 0:07:39"Let water be consecrated and sprinkled in the said temples.
0:07:39 > 0:07:42"Let altars be erected and relics placed there.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46"For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be
0:07:46 > 0:07:50"converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God,
0:07:50 > 0:07:54"that that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed,
0:07:54 > 0:07:58"may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God,
0:07:58 > 0:08:03"may the more freely resort to the places to which they have been accustomed."
0:08:05 > 0:08:08I've arranged to meet with Philip Carr-Gomm.
0:08:08 > 0:08:15He's a druid who has also written about Britain's journey from paganism to Christianity.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18So what kind of timescale would we be talking about?
0:08:18 > 0:08:21We're really talking about from the 4th to the 7th century.
0:08:21 > 0:08:26And by the 7th century the door was really closing and finally closed
0:08:26 > 0:08:30between that pre-Christian culture and the Christian culture.
0:08:30 > 0:08:35So, presumably, different areas were Christianised as it were at different times.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38Yes, but interestingly enough not in the way that you'd expect.
0:08:38 > 0:08:44You'd expect that Christianity would spread from the Holy Land up, from south to the north.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47But, in fact, it worked in a completely different way,
0:08:47 > 0:08:49it came down from the north,
0:08:49 > 0:08:52from the Celtic Christianity up in the north, from Scotland, Iona,
0:08:52 > 0:08:55coming down and then there was a sort of pincer movement
0:08:55 > 0:09:00coming from St Augustine in Kent coming in from the east.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04So that the last places to become Christian in Britain were Sussex and Hampshire.
0:09:04 > 0:09:07- Really?- Yes.- Why was that then?
0:09:07 > 0:09:10Well, because there was a vast stretch of land called the Waste of Undred
0:09:10 > 0:09:14between the North Downs and the South Downs that was full of bears
0:09:14 > 0:09:21and boars and brigands and pagans, forested and so on and it took a while to get through.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23- Really?- Yeah.- Wow!
0:09:23 > 0:09:29We're walking along the lip of a henge. What exactly is a henge? How would it have been used?
0:09:29 > 0:09:31A henge is a sacred enclosure.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34And we know it's designed to mark out a sacred space
0:09:34 > 0:09:37- because the ditch is inside and not outside.- Right.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40And so you can't possibly defend a place like this,
0:09:40 > 0:09:44because your attackers would be higher than you were down there.
0:09:44 > 0:09:48So what it's saying is "we come in peace" in a way.
0:09:48 > 0:09:52How much is recorded of the activities at sites like this?
0:09:52 > 0:09:55We don't know. It's too early for that
0:09:55 > 0:10:01- but what we do know is that in some of the henges there was a stone circle.- Right.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04In other ones there were ritual burials.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08In other places there seems to have been nothing in the centre,
0:10:08 > 0:10:10but they were probably observatories.
0:10:10 > 0:10:14Who knows? We don't know, but perhaps they were like amphitheatres
0:10:14 > 0:10:16and people could be sitting here watching.
0:10:16 > 0:10:21Or great processions came and went through the various entrance ways,
0:10:21 > 0:10:24forming in the centre some sort of ceremony.
0:10:24 > 0:10:29The fact that this church has been built in the centre is a way of saying,
0:10:29 > 0:10:34"Look, this is already a holy place. This is a sacred place. Let's build a church here."
0:10:34 > 0:10:41And you can view a site like this either as one culture or one religion imposing itself upon another,
0:10:41 > 0:10:45or you can look at it as a sort of evolution and development.
0:10:45 > 0:10:50That is it starts off with a period of life with one type of spirituality and religion
0:10:50 > 0:10:53and changes to another one.
0:10:53 > 0:10:59One part of this site would be familiar to all the worshipers here, whether Christian or pagan,
0:10:59 > 0:11:02this pair of yew trees on the perimeter of the henge.
0:11:03 > 0:11:08Some yew tress grow to an incredibly ripe age,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13which means they will have seen the pre-Christian as well as the Christian era.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16- Thousands of years.- Thousands of years.- Really?- Yes.
0:11:16 > 0:11:22But these... Oh, actually, it's pretty old in there, isn't it?
0:11:22 > 0:11:26When you get close up, it's older than you think.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30- It's hard to tell. - Cos they regenerate sometimes.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33They regenerate and they can live...
0:11:33 > 0:11:39- So it's just possible that this is a very, very old yew tree indeed. - Really?
0:11:39 > 0:11:44And that, of course, brings up the idea that this tree or perhaps its predecessors
0:11:44 > 0:11:48were here before the coming of Christianity.
0:11:48 > 0:11:54- Yeah.- And has lived through that as a living being and is still alive today in the Christian era.
0:11:54 > 0:11:58- Still very much alive? - Still very much alive.
0:11:58 > 0:12:02And now they're tying these beautiful clutties and they're prayer ties.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06And they're tying these either because they're giving thanks
0:12:06 > 0:12:09or they're tying them as a request,
0:12:09 > 0:12:15symbolic of their wish to be healed or to achieve a particular goal.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19Just who is tying these clutties is unclear.
0:12:19 > 0:12:24This is one of the rituals which has grown out of the resurgence of pagan practises.
0:12:26 > 0:12:32Christianity may have come and gone on this site but I wasn't expecting to come across such direct evidence
0:12:32 > 0:12:35that earth magic has never truly gone away.
0:12:36 > 0:12:38It gives the place an eerie feeling.
0:12:40 > 0:12:43What's so interesting about this particular site
0:12:43 > 0:12:49is you have the pre-Christian sense of sacredness
0:12:49 > 0:12:53melded together with the Christian sense of the sacred
0:12:53 > 0:12:57and both deeply connected to the landscape here.
0:12:57 > 0:13:03And then people are coming here and here are these two guardian trees standing here
0:13:03 > 0:13:07that people are intuitively or instinctively recognising as magical and sacred.
0:13:07 > 0:13:11And, of course, they represent a gateway, the gateway between life and death,
0:13:11 > 0:13:14the gateway between this world and the other world,
0:13:14 > 0:13:17or between the material world and the spiritual world.
0:13:17 > 0:13:19It's full of resonances as a symbol.
0:13:19 > 0:13:24So when two trees come together at a gateway, it's a very profound symbol.
0:13:31 > 0:13:34It's strange to think that even in this place
0:13:34 > 0:13:38which has a spiritual heritage stretching back thousands of years,
0:13:38 > 0:13:42one of the most enduring things are the yew trees.
0:13:43 > 0:13:48But then these trees have always captivated our imaginations.
0:13:48 > 0:13:54And I'm heading to Nevern in Pembrokeshire to see another example of a very unusual yew tree.
0:13:58 > 0:14:01You can walk into many churchyards all over the country
0:14:01 > 0:14:06and find these strange, ancient trees standing guard over the dead.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15Not only do they live for hundreds, even thousands of years
0:14:15 > 0:14:20but their leaves and berries are so poisonous they can easily kill you.
0:14:26 > 0:14:30But this yew tree has a different characteristic, it appears to bleed.
0:14:30 > 0:14:35It's a relatively recent phenomenon, but what does it mean?
0:14:35 > 0:14:39According to some, it bleeds for a man wrongly hanged many years ago.
0:14:39 > 0:14:43According to others, it will bleed until the world is at peace.
0:14:43 > 0:14:49According to some Christians the red sap of this yew tree represents the blood of Christ.
0:14:49 > 0:14:53The tree itself suggests the cross on which he was crucified.
0:14:53 > 0:14:56But they can't all be right, or can they?
0:14:59 > 0:15:02There's been some form of church on this site since the 6th century,
0:15:02 > 0:15:06but the tree itself is around 600 years old.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11No definitive scientific explanation for the bleeding has been established.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16One theory is that it's caused by a fungal infection,
0:15:16 > 0:15:21another that trapped rainwater is being coloured by sap.
0:15:26 > 0:15:30In earlier times, when Christianity was the dominant intellectual force
0:15:30 > 0:15:32this would have been described as a miracle.
0:15:34 > 0:15:37Yet this in itself was a new way of looking at the world,
0:15:37 > 0:15:43Christianity having elbowed aside earlier pagan interpretations of sites just like this.
0:15:43 > 0:15:50The Book of Genesis, the earliest book in the Bible, contains numerous references to sacred trees.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53In the middle of the Garden of Eden, we find the Tree of Life
0:15:53 > 0:15:56and the Tree of Knowledge with its forbidden fruit.
0:15:56 > 0:16:00Abraham later on travels to the great tree of Morre
0:16:00 > 0:16:04and encounters God, near the great trees of Mamre.
0:16:04 > 0:16:06Is it too fanciful to see here,
0:16:06 > 0:16:10remnants of an earlier system of nature worship?
0:16:10 > 0:16:13When the Judeo-Christian scriptures were first written,
0:16:13 > 0:16:20they needed to acknowledge trees and nature because those were the dominant ideas in older religions.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26They needed to find ways of acknowledging and then incorporating them.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32As time has gone by mainstream Christianity
0:16:32 > 0:16:37has moved away from the power of nature as a central part of its philosophy,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40but nature still appeals to many people emotionally.
0:16:43 > 0:16:49The church and graveyard here at Nevern are undoubtedly holy places in their own right,
0:16:49 > 0:16:53but what the bleeding yew does is it allow us
0:16:53 > 0:16:57to witness the genesis and development of a new holy site,
0:16:57 > 0:17:02one that at the moment supports a multiplicity of interpretations,
0:17:02 > 0:17:06some based on superstition, others based on religion.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10But perhaps at root they're not that different.
0:17:10 > 0:17:14Superstition and religion are both forms of belief,
0:17:14 > 0:17:18it's just that religion enjoys a much higher status.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23Many Christians find the bleeding yew tree at Nevern remarkable,
0:17:23 > 0:17:29but to pagans all trees are important because of what they signify,
0:17:29 > 0:17:32the link between the earth and the air.
0:17:32 > 0:17:35Earth and air are two of the central elements in pagan beliefs
0:17:35 > 0:17:39and trees represent a physical bridge between them.
0:17:42 > 0:17:47And it is for this same reason that hills and mountains are also venerated.
0:17:51 > 0:17:57As Christianity spread across Britain it had to confront paganism in its holy places.
0:18:00 > 0:18:06Since pagans revered the highest peaks it was there that the Christians went to do battle.
0:18:13 > 0:18:16And my next destination is the site of one such struggle,
0:18:16 > 0:18:23a mountain in North Wales where a 6th century Christian missionary took on the devil himself.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30This winter sunshine really brings out the epic qualities of this Snowdonia landscape
0:18:30 > 0:18:33and it has an epic tale to tell.
0:18:33 > 0:18:38It was here that St Twrog took on the forces of pagan evil.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41And here on the slopes of Moelwyn Bach
0:18:41 > 0:18:46he came to seek divine intervention to enable him to cast the decisive blow.
0:18:53 > 0:18:59I'm meeting Twm Elias, a lecturer and author who knows all about that fateful meeting.
0:18:59 > 0:19:04Can you tell me just what happened when St Twrog took on the pagans?
0:19:04 > 0:19:07Well, when he arrived in this area as a Christian missionary
0:19:07 > 0:19:10bringing Christianity to this particular district,
0:19:10 > 0:19:13he found that the people locally were worshipping the devil,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16that's according to the story at least,
0:19:16 > 0:19:21which would have undoubtedly been the horned god, Cernunnos, the god of fertility.
0:19:21 > 0:19:25And there was a big fight between Twrog and the devil
0:19:25 > 0:19:29and during the intermission, they were quite civilised about it,
0:19:29 > 0:19:35Twrog went for a walk up the top of the mountain at the top there and there he cheated.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38Cos he prayed for divine help now.
0:19:38 > 0:19:43And then an angel came and gave Twrog terrific strength.
0:19:43 > 0:19:48Well, Twrog became very, very strong suddenly and grabbed
0:19:48 > 0:19:53hold of a mighty stone and threw the stone, hurled the stone through the air
0:19:53 > 0:19:57and it came down and landed right in between the hoofs of the devil
0:19:57 > 0:20:02who then realised that his number was up, no point in fighting any longer.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06And as you would expect the devil then swore and cursed,
0:20:06 > 0:20:11as a devil would do, obviously, swished his tail, opened his wings
0:20:11 > 0:20:17and flew away eastwards from here and he didn't land until he came to England.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20And that's where he is to this very day, apparently.
0:20:20 > 0:20:26- HE LAUGHS - Well, wherever the devil may be, his stone is still here.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29Twrog's stone is still here. And here it is. This is the evidence.
0:20:29 > 0:20:35This proves to you that tale is true because there we are, indisputable evidence.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39Whatever the truth or otherwise of the story,
0:20:39 > 0:20:43it certainly represents a real friction at one point
0:20:43 > 0:20:47between Christians and pagans, doesn't it?
0:20:47 > 0:20:53Yes, certainly. And the point was there would have been a holy site at this point, a pagan holy site,
0:20:53 > 0:20:57because of course you're by the river here and this would have been a ford.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00And very often you find a stone marking a ford.
0:21:00 > 0:21:07The river represented a boundary between not only this world and the next, the water and the land,
0:21:07 > 0:21:13but it was also a very important tribal boundary. And so a ford would have been a place to do battle.
0:21:13 > 0:21:15And in this particular incidence it was a battle
0:21:15 > 0:21:21between Twrog the Christian and the devil representing the old faith.
0:21:21 > 0:21:25Although Christianity won the day when St Twrog defeated the devil,
0:21:25 > 0:21:32it could be argued that in other ways pagan traditions infiltrated the Christian ways of doing things.
0:21:32 > 0:21:39Yeah. Well, they certainly influenced the siting of the Christian church at least.
0:21:39 > 0:21:44It would have had to be here, because if it was half a mile down the road, then of course people
0:21:44 > 0:21:47would come there in the middle of the night to perform the pagan ceremonies.
0:21:47 > 0:21:50But here the best way to neutralise it was to put a church
0:21:50 > 0:21:53splat on top of the site, you know.
0:21:53 > 0:22:00And, therefore, that church then took on, I suppose, the value and sacred nature of the site itself
0:22:00 > 0:22:05and then grafted Christianity onto it,
0:22:05 > 0:22:09doing away with the old pagan branch, as it were.
0:22:14 > 0:22:19Once again we find Christianity setting up camp on top of earlier pagan sites
0:22:19 > 0:22:22to stop them being used by the old religion.
0:22:24 > 0:22:29Across the country this led to churches being built on top of many hills and mountains,
0:22:29 > 0:22:32literally staking out the moral high ground.
0:22:34 > 0:22:40Such hilltop churches are commonly dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46The iconic church tower on Glastonbury Tor is dedicated to him,
0:22:46 > 0:22:50as is St Michael's Mount near the tip of Cornwall,
0:22:50 > 0:22:53a place where the fiery angel is said to have appeared
0:22:53 > 0:22:56to some frightened fishermen around the year 500.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01And then there's this place, in the middle of Cornwall,
0:23:01 > 0:23:07a rocky crag that a mediaeval hermit turned into a dramatic cliff-top chapel.
0:23:07 > 0:23:12It may seem an odd place to choose to withdraw from society because it's such an obvious landmark,
0:23:12 > 0:23:15but he could live a holy and exemplary life here,
0:23:15 > 0:23:20dispensing wisdom from on high perhaps, just as Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25This cell stands in splendid isolation,
0:23:25 > 0:23:29like a spiritual fortress watching over the surrounding countryside.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36This tiny chapel clinging to the top of a rocky outcrop
0:23:36 > 0:23:39near Bodmin in Cornwall dates back to 1409.
0:23:39 > 0:23:45Precise details of the medieval hermits who dwelt here are now lost,
0:23:45 > 0:23:49but it does provide one of the most striking views of all of the sites I have visited.
0:23:55 > 0:24:01In fact, it is such an arresting site it was used as a location in the Omen horror films.
0:24:03 > 0:24:08This is actually quite apt. In the Book of Revelations, St Michael is depicted
0:24:08 > 0:24:13as leader of God's army during the titanic battle with the anti-Christ.
0:24:13 > 0:24:19He is supposed to have beaten the devil's forces and driven them from the heavens.
0:24:19 > 0:24:24Our ancestors prayed that in their hour of need St Michael would flutter down from the clouds
0:24:24 > 0:24:29like a butterfly to find a convenient high point on which to land.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32But there was nothing butterfly-like about St Michael.
0:24:32 > 0:24:39He's always portrayed as a warrior angel, leading the forces of light against the forces of darkness.
0:24:39 > 0:24:46And once again in Christian tradition we find it's tinged with a sense of conflicting belief.
0:24:46 > 0:24:49Were the mountains the last refuges of the old pagan gods,
0:24:49 > 0:24:54who needed St Michael to come with has sword in order to put them to flight?
0:24:54 > 0:24:58It seems that we can never truly embrace the natural landscape
0:24:58 > 0:25:01without bumping up against earlier belief systems.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06It's no surprise that later Christians
0:25:06 > 0:25:11felt that the country's conversion from paganism was unfinished business.
0:25:11 > 0:25:17In the 17th century, many decided it was time to finish the job once and for all.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21We saw in Glastonbury how the Puritans destroyed the thorn tree
0:25:21 > 0:25:24because of a whiff of pagan idolatry,
0:25:24 > 0:25:31but the Puritans were not alone in this obsession. This is Pendle Hill in Lancashire
0:25:33 > 0:25:36There's one man who more than anyone tried to rid his religion
0:25:36 > 0:25:40of any lingering traces of ancient superstitions,
0:25:40 > 0:25:45and in the process founded perhaps the most stripped down Christian movement of all time.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48We know them as the Society of Friends or the Quakers
0:25:48 > 0:25:55and they did away with all the rituals and sacraments that mark out other churches.
0:25:55 > 0:26:01Their founder's name was George Fox and in 1652, he came here to Pendle Hill.
0:26:24 > 0:26:27On a much sunnier afternoon than today, in early summer,
0:26:27 > 0:26:31George Fox was "moved by the Lord" as he put it, to come up here.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35From the top of the hill, he had a vision of human souls ripe for harvest,
0:26:35 > 0:26:39as real to him as the patchwork of fields behind us there.
0:26:39 > 0:26:41As he recorded in his diary,
0:26:41 > 0:26:47"From the top of the hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered".
0:26:47 > 0:26:50Now, it's ironic that even George Fox,
0:26:50 > 0:26:56a man who put such emphasis on inner transformation and the avoidance of all outward rituals,
0:26:56 > 0:27:02should be impelled to come up a mountain, as many others have before him, in order to receive a vision.
0:27:07 > 0:27:13George Fox and his followers rejected virtually all the trappings of religion.
0:27:13 > 0:27:17Quakers have no ceremonies of baptism, their meeting houses have no altars,
0:27:17 > 0:27:20and their services are not conducted by priests.
0:27:21 > 0:27:27Fox himself even refused to use the names of the days of the week or the months of the year
0:27:27 > 0:27:29that derived from pagan gods.
0:27:31 > 0:27:37Quakers set out to rid themselves of anything which could be construed as pagan idolatry
0:27:37 > 0:27:42and yet the very place that inspired their leader to develop the Quaker movement
0:27:42 > 0:27:47is one that would be equally powerful to a pagan or a Christian.
0:27:52 > 0:27:57The landscape has been a battleground between pagans and Christians in our early history,
0:27:57 > 0:28:03and indeed nature features in many faiths, but its greatness lies in the fact that it belongs to no one.
0:28:03 > 0:28:09Nature is non-denominational, trees and mountains are beyond dogma,
0:28:09 > 0:28:14they inspire within us feelings that are mystical and difficult to explain.
0:28:14 > 0:28:20But maybe then that's the point, because nature is so much greater than we are
0:28:20 > 0:28:26and it's in places like this that many of us feel that we come closest to the divine.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd